BCB After Dark: Looking at the other side

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the swingin’ spot for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. I hope the weather didn’t shake you up too much tonight. Come on and and calm your nerves. Still plenty of good tables available. No dress code tonight if you keep your camera turned off. You’re just in time for the start of the evening’s entertainment. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon. BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

The Cubs lost their seventh-straight game tonight, 4-1 to the Padres. This is a problem for me because I see this space as a more relaxing and chill alternative to the rest of the site and it’s really hard to be calm when the Cubs are playing this poorly. You can blame Rowan Wick if you want, but any team that gets one run and five hits in nine innings doesn’t deserve to win.

If you want a bright spot, I guess the Cubs haven’t fallen a single game further behind the Pirates for third place during this seven-game losing streak since the Pirates have lost seven-straight too.

Last time I asked you who you thought was the Cubs’ top prospect after a little over two months of the 2022 season. By a margin of 61 percent to 31 percent, you thought that outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong had passed outfielder Brennen Davis as the Cubs’ number one prospect. The rest of you thought that it was someone else.

Here’s the part where I talk about jazz and movies. Feel free to skip to the baseball question at the end if you wish. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Tonight I’m bringing you collection of saxophonist Dexter Gordon performances from his time in Europe in 1963 and 1964. If you read the movie section, you’ll know why. This is simply a good way to start out the week with what I have planned.

I don’t have a movie to talk to you about yet, but I’m in the process of writing about the 1986 movie ‘Round Midnight, directed by Bertrand Tavernier and starring Dexter Gordon as Dale Turner, a fictional jazz saxophonist based on pianist Bud Powell. It’s the story of the Jazz scene in Paris in the late-1950s and the friendship between Turner and a French graphic artist, played by François Cluzet.

Without spoiling too much about the film, I will say that I love it. Plus, writing about it (hopefully on Wednesday night/Thursday morning) will allow me to kill the jazz and movie section of this column with one stone. See? I’m thinking ahead!

But music films have been trendy recently and with a new biopic of Elvis coming out this summer, I thought I’d ask you to name some of your favorite music films. By this, I don’t mean concert films or musicals, but movies about musicians, be they fictional or not. So if you loved Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Walk the Line, Bird, La Bamba or Ray, share that with us.

It can even be a fictional music film, such as Grace of My Heart or That Thing You Do, two 1996 films (what was it about that year?) with big cult followings. Or The Buddy Holly Story. As the local public radio DJ that I listened to almost every Saturday night back when I was in high school used to say, “The Buddy Holly Story is a great rock ‘n’ roll movie. It’s just too bad it’s not about Buddy Holly.” Young Man with a Horn is a bit like that too. That’s a good (albeit not great) movie that is supposedly based on the life of jazz pioneer Bix Biederbecke. Although for the life of me, I can’t see where the actual events of Biederbecke’s life are shown in that film.

And then there is This is Spinal Tap. Not just one of the greatest music movies ever made, but one of the greatest comedies ever made. On a scale of 1 to 10, it goes to 11.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton of great musical films that you can fill everyone in on in the comments.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the jazz and movies.

With the Cubs in a seven-game losing streak, I feel I need to talk about something else other than the Cubs. At least and keep my blood pressure low and my sanity intact.

But I still love baseball, so let’s talk about some other teams. Specifically, let’s talk about American League teams. Back when the two leagues never played each other, it was easy for a Cubs fan to have an “American League team” to cheer for if the Cubs weren’t doing so well. That’s a little more difficult today, but it’s still possible to cheer for a second team in the AL except when they play the Cubs and feel like you’re still a die-hard Cubs fan.

So tonight, I’m going to ask you which American League team you cheer for. It doesn’t have to be a team that you follow closely, but it’s a team that when the playoffs come around, they’re the AL team that you want to see advance to the World Series. (It doesn’t look like you’ll be too busy cheering for the Cubs this year, I’m sorry to have to say.) It also doesn’t have to be a team that you’ve been cheering for for years. If you just like the players on this year’s Twins, for example, vote for them even though you’ve never cheered for the Twins before this year. Bandwagoning is fine. Or if your grandfather was a diehard Tigers fan and you’ve secretly cheered for Detroit on the side for years, that’s good too. (Confession: My maternal grandfather was a die-hard Tigers fan, starting from the days of Ty Cobb. I’ve never really cheered for or against the Tigers. In my defense, my grandfather died when I was very young and I have no memory of him or of him being a Tigers fan. It’s just what my mother told me.)

So tell us what American League team you’d cheer for if you had to.

Thank you again so much for stopping by. I hope that you’ve been able to take your mind off your cares and worries for a short time, anyway. Please tip your waitstaff. Get home safely. Tell your friends. And join us again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.